{"id":2902,"date":"2010-02-19T11:44:30","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T19:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/simonburrow.com\/\/?p=2902"},"modified":"2010-02-19T11:44:30","modified_gmt":"2010-02-19T19:44:30","slug":"a-conflict-of-interests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/?p=2902","title":{"rendered":"A Conflict of Interests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The US Government, which is the majority shareholder of General Motors, is also the arbiter of automobile safety in the USA.\u00a0 Currently GM&#8217;s biggest competitor, Toyota, is having serious quality issues and the NHTSA (part of the US Government&#8217;s Transportation Department) is turning up the heat.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a class=\"tt-flickr tt-flickr-Small\" title=\"Great Wall Great Truck\" href=\"http:\/\/simonburrow.com\/\/photos\/photo\/4338983606\/great-wall-great-truck.html\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2713\/4338983606_8a93d38e01_m.jpg?resize=240%2C122\" alt=\"Great Wall Great Truck\" width=\"240\" height=\"122\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t have enough data to comment on whether Toyota&#8217;s quality issues are as serious as they sound. But if I were a Japanese citizen reading about the timing of the recalls and that GM is owned by the safety enforcer I would be extremely suspicious.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m reminded of what I used to call &#8220;Caesars wife&#8217;s rule.&#8221;\u00a0 Caesars wife should never act improperly but she also should never be in a position where there can even be any suspicion that she acted improperly.\u00a0 The US Government has violated this principle and the Japanese have a right to be suspicious.<\/p>\n<p>If the Japanese get as mad as I would about this it could develop into a very serious conflict.\u00a0 Remember that the people of Central America are still suspicious of US intentions in their region, because of the actions of the <a href=\"http:\/\/simonburrow.com\/\/archives\/simon-says\/william-walker\" target=\"_self\"><strong>filibuster William Walker<\/strong><\/a> a hundred and fifty years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US Government, which is the majority shareholder of General Motors, is also the arbiter of automobile safety in the USA.\u00a0 Currently GM&#8217;s biggest competitor, Toyota, is having serious quality issues and the NHTSA (part of the US Government&#8217;s Transportation Department) is turning up the heat. I don&#8217;t have enough data to comment on whether [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[39,37,311,40,38],"class_list":["post-2902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-gm","tag-imperialism","tag-politics","tag-recalls","tag-toyota"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p99jGb-KO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2902"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2906,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2902\/revisions\/2906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}